Facebook – Top 100 FAVORITE Video Games: 71

71: Mortal Kombat II (Arcade and EVERY HOME CONSOLE EVER)
Developer: Midway
Year: 1993

Every kid played Mortal Kombat on the SNES or the Genesis. Why wouldn’t they have? You could cut people up, start them on fire, rip their heads off, and/or blowing them up to bits. Blood and guts, man, blood and guts. Everyone did battle with their best friends, going to each other’s home, trying to beat the best scores, “testing their might” against wood and stone and… like, ruby? For some reason? It was a reason to go to the arcades, again. Eventually, though, people were going to get tired of it. And when you have such a popular game, the only choice is to create a franchise. Thus, the much more fun, better balanced, and best game in the series was released not long after.

Mortal Kombat games have never been about story, although they have become more fleshed out in recent years, detailing the characters lives and reasons for their inclusion into the tournament. But all you need to know is that these fighters have entered into a competition in order to either damn Earth or save it from the emperor or Outworld. Its a pretty dumb plot, really, that has only gotten more convoluted and stupid as the years have gone on. But if you had a sense of who your characters were between this game and the second one, it made playing them that much more interesting. Knowing that Liu Kang’s temple and family were killed by invasion forces makes him more likable. Or not really. People just wanted him to turn into a dragon and eat people.

The gameplay, though, is clearly where the real value of this game comes from. Building from its predecessor, MK2 introduces a handful of new characters into the mix (Baraka, Jax, Reptile, etc.) while taking Kano and Sonya away (because, seriously, who the fuck played as Kano or Sonya?), and it introduced a new four-armed enemy and final boss. The structure is classic arcade style go-down-the-roster, two-of-three contests. But unlike other games, this one had bloody “Fatalities” – something fighting games since have copied because its expected of them. The controls are tight, the combos are both intuitive and challenging, and each character has secret moves that are responsive and simple to master if you have the know-how (or cheat guide!) to figure them all out. But back in the time it came out, MK2 didn’t have a huge following on the internet, providing gamers with tips and walkthroughs for the cast; we had to figure the moves out on our own or make a trip to get an EGM  or other gaming magazine. It added to the challenge and, against friends and family, the prestige in defeating someone with a special move they’d never seen before.

Everything else about the game is top notch; the battle fields have been completely scrapped and then redone since the first game, still providing a few opportunities to perform fatal finishing moves using surrounding dangers (spikes on the wall, acid pits, a long, Pit-like fall in a level called “Pit 2”, etc.). The models in this time were also done using mo-cap to get the fighters perfect, but they didn’t go over the models with graphics. Instead, they simply digitized the actors in costume and recorded the moves, pain reactions, and everything else. So your Scorpion on screen is some guy in a yellow costume (who actually played the same guy in the blue costume. The green one, too).

All in all, Mortal Kombat 2 took everything that the first game provided and simply made it that much better. A more diverse roster, more interesting finishing moves, a bit more lore for story-focused nerds, and a better control setup. Further games in the series would offer more moves, much more outrageous finishing moves, and far too many characters (the last MK game had, I think, every character in the entire series, including people that aren’t really characters; the guy on fire in the background of Pit 2 from MK2? Yeah, he’s playable. Why? Why not, I guess…), but after MK2 every single game started to lose more and more of what made the series great. That’s why 2 is the best.

Classic Moment:
Can a fighting game have a classic moment? I mean, I guess this game introduced “TOASTY!” into both the franchise and the vocabulary of thousands of annoying teenage boys. Don’t know that it counts as classic though, per se….

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Added September 30, 2016
Man, archiving the Top 100 Games notes is time consuming…
I don’t know that this would make it anymore, either. Maybe. But maybe not. Fighting games didn’t really do it for me, you know? Hm.